OK, now that I’ve given you a “brief” overview of the 10G Grid Control advisor toolsets, let’s start our in-depth discussions of them by reviewing Oracle’s Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (affectionately known as ADDM).

Once I cover all of the advisors, we’ll review what we have learned and then apply our newfound knowledge by running through a couple of performance tuning scenarios.

I’ve been writing this blog for a while now. I have received a fair number of questions about my background. So I thought I would spend a few minutes in one blog discussing my “body of work” to date. Rest assured I won’t make this a habit. Mainly because I’m not that interesting. We’ll then get back on topic and continue our discussion on the 10G EM advisors.

In my last blog, I presented a quick overview of 10G Enterprise Manager’s database performance monitoring capabilities. Oracle’s latest release also contains numerous enhancements to Enterprise Manager’s advisor utilities. This blog contains a high level overview of the various advisors available in 10G Grid Control. In subsequent blogs, we’ll take an in-depth look at each one of them to see exactly what benefits they offer.

Before we begin our discussion on the intelligent advisors contained in Oracle10G, it is important that we review the entire architecture from a higher level. I want to make sure that we all have a firm understanding of 10G's Common Manageability Infrastructure before we begin reviewing the individual advisors.

To ensure that we have this firm foundation, we must learn more about the Automatic Workload Repository and Active Session History which capture the data that many of the advisors use as input. Although, the Automatic Workload Repository and Active Session History may not be as exciting as the advice provided by the advisors and the automatic tuning recommendations provided by ADDM, it is important for us to understand the information used as input by these new components.

Let's forge ahead with our discussion on 10G Grid Control's performance monitoring capablities by turning our attention to database performance. Like the blogs on 10G host performance, I’ll break this information up into two blogs. This first blog will provide you with a quick tour of EM's database performance monitoring component. In my next blog, I'll provide you with a brief overview on how to use the information it generates to monitor database performance.

We’ll then take a look at 10G Grid Control’s performance advisors that are grouped together in Advisor Central. Once we have a firm understanding of Enterprise Manager’s performance and tuning capabilities, we’ll put our newfound knowledge to use when we use EM to solve some real-world performance problems.

Before we begin our discussion on 10G Grid Control's database monitoring and tuning features, I thought I would show you how to configure the 10G Grid Control environment to provide automatic notifications. Creating automatic notifications allows database administrators to identify (and correct) performance and availability issues before they negatively impact the database environment.

In many of my blogs, I have been promising to cover this topic. In addition, I'm getting a little tired of writing "We'll learn more about creating and modifying performance alerts in upcoming blogs." So consider this "the upcoming blog."

We took a quick detour from 10G in my last blog. In this blog, we get back on topic by discussing 10G Enterprise Manager's host performance monitoring and tuning features. In the final installment of this two-part series, I'll show you how to use 10G Grid Control's drilldown capabilities to identify performance problems.

What? A 9I article in a 10G blog? What happened? And its not on host monitoring like you promised? Blashpemy! Well, I thought I'd deviate from 10G for one blog to show you something neat that we have been using to tune vendor queries that are not coded for "optimal performance".

So here's what I'll do to make up for it. Because Stored Outline administration has changed somehwat much from 9I to 10G, I'll make sure I cover how Stored Outlines are created and administered in a 10G environment in a future blog.

No matter how expertly you tune an Oracle database, if the server it runs on is overloaded, underpowered or configured incorrectly, you will never obtain "maximus database performis".

So, let's start our discussion on 10G Enterprise Manager's performance monitoring features by investigating the tool's new host monitoring capabilities. This first blog will provide you with a quick tour of EM's hot new host monitoring component. In my next blog, I'll show you how you use the information it generates to monitor operating system and hardware performance.

Ok, I just got notification that the administrators need to "freeze" this blogsite for a few days. The freeze starts on Wednesday (4/13/05) and may last until this coming Friday or Monday. We are converting to a new content management system called Plone. Plone is an open-source content management system that provides the capability for blogs, RSS feeds, and other fun stuff.

I wanted to try and squeeze a blog in that discusses 10G Grid Control's new host monitoring features. These new tools will allow us to monitor and tune the hardware and operating system environment that Oracle runs on. But it looks like I'm not going to make the deadline. I started to rush through the article (or blog or whatever you want to call it) and decided that I would prefer to postpone it until next week. There is just too much information to cover and rushing through it would be a disservice to you and to the host monitoring features that 10G Enterprise Manager provides. I want to cover each new feature as thoroughly as I can. I have numerous screen prints, hints and tips I want to include in this next blog.

So we'll switch topics for a minute and I'll provide you with a quick preview of what's to come in future blogs.